Managing the physical symptoms “Each time, before I went on stage, I began to think, ‘How can I go on playing the piano, if this is what it’s going to be like?’” – Steven Osborne, concert pianist The physical symptoms

In this, the first of a series of articles, I will look at the origins and causes of Performance Anxiety. Subsequent articles will offer strategies for managing anxiety. For many musicians, “stage fright” or Performance Anxiety is the fear which

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture Oft quoted, frequently mis-attributed, this statement brilliantly captures the difficulty of writing about something abstract, what Ferruccio Busoni called ‘sonorous airs’ – the music itself. There’s an over-abundance of writing about music

Today is March 26th, 2020, the 15th day of a first self-imposed, and now state-imposed isolation period. And I’m already sick of the live-streaming pandemic that has hit us. Don’t get me wrong – I enjoy solidarity as much as

One of my best friends is a published author. With two popular and successful books under her belt, she gave up her day job to write full time and now her imagination and creativity seem to know no bounds. When

The author Umberto Eco has a library of an astonishing 30,000+ books, most of which he has not, and probably never will read. Nassim Nicholas Talib (author of The Black Swan) calls this an “anti-library” and believes it represents an

Criticone who engages often professionally in the analysis, evaluation, or appreciation of works of art or artistic performances The debate about the value music criticism and those who write it is nothing new, and is one that is likely to

Music does not speak of position or place. It can be heard as English, French or German and it might sound like it comes from the voice of other countries, but music is also a language unto itself, and it